


if you want my advice

by pega



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pega/pseuds/pega
Summary: The thing about this advice giving is, Aziraphale knows he’s not great at it. Unconditional love, absolutely. Translating that into human relationship terms? Not so much.(Or, the one where Aziraphale keeps getting humans wanting relationship advice, when really, he's the one who could use a push)





	if you want my advice

A sunny London afternoon was a particular type of pleasure, thought Aziraphale. There was something spectacular about the warmth coming down on a city that had long grown used to never quite shaking off a chill. 

 

He supposed he was perhaps enjoying the warmth a smidge too much. Heaven was kept at a brisk 62 degrees fahrenheit, just low enough to tip over from neutral into noticeable. Or at least that’s how Aziraphale perceived it. He hadn’t dared to ask about it during his last visit, worrying that it may be a side effect of a human form too well lived in (too well loved, too well worn). 

 

But this, the park bench and the touch of heat, the ticking time bomb as his pale skin toed the line between toasted and burnt? This was something better than Heavenly. It was Earthly, and he couldn’t be gladder for it.

 

Crowley was only just late, or maybe Aziraphale was earlier than he usually was. At any rate, he was fully expecting someone to sit down next to him sometime soon, and fully expected that person to be Crowley.

 

And well. He was half right.

 

“Do you know-” hiccuped the gangly young man beside him, “-do you know why this keeps happening? Happening to me.”

 

“Oh, my.”

 

The boy, or man rather, but to Aziraphale anyone under the age of two eons seemed quite young, kept talking, a rushed stream of consciousness that sounded like a soliloquy but felt like confession. “People leave, you know? Off to college, off to Hampshire, off to France. Bloody France, right? Why do they go to such stupid places?”

 

Aziraphale, to his own slight irritation, felt his empathy immediately leap to the surface of his soul and demand to be made useful. He was an Angel, after all, and this was a prayer of sorts that he could do his best to answer. “Who has left you, dear?”

 

“Everyone.” The boy sounded put out. “I said everyone, and I damn well mean it.”

 

“No use for that sort of language,” Aziraphale muttered. “Well, er. What keeps you here, then, if everyone in your world has left? Could you leave too, travel a bit? Not that I’m advising it, mind, but it’s worth considering.”

 

He wondered, briefly, if the poor boy was too drunk or hysterical to be counseled, if maybe a divine miracle of sobriety could be in order. But his words did seem to have an effect, and the boy straightened his spine and seemed a smidge more pulled together than before. “Leave London? Bloody never.”

 

Aziraphale grinned. “A man after my own heart.”

 

“Right on.”

 

“But-” he pressed. “If you’re going to be a Londoner for life, which I do truly recommend, you ought to get involved, hm? Make some friends here!” 

 

The boy blinked.

 

“You must,” Aziraphale was getting back into the swing of this counseling thing now, “love where you are. Open your heart to the goodness to be found, and-”

 

“-Angel?” A gangly man with expensive looking clothes, expensive looking sunglasses, and a freely gaping grin was standing just off to the side, looking for all the world like a best man gifted with a truly incriminating video of a stag party groom-to-be.

 

Oh, bugger. “Crowley! I was just talking to my new friend here, what’s your name, lad?”

 

“Jack.”

 

“-Jack, about the merits of London and-”

 

“-and opening hearts, yeah, heard that bit.” Crowley turned to Jack. “You’re in my seat, you know.”

 

Jack paled. 

 

Aziraphale huffed. “Crowley, there’s no need for that, we were just getting to the advice portion.”

 

“It’s fine, I’m fine. Sorry for- sorry.” Jack stammered out. “You were helpful, really, you were. Love where you are, open your heart, all that. Thanks.”

 

Aziraphale hadn’t seen someone run that quickly while drunk in some time. “Really, there was no need.”

 

Crowley shrugged. “It’s my time with you now, oh great counselor of drunk lads with spots.” He grinned, and Aziraphale thought he could spot that forked tongue for a moment. “And I’m possssessive.”

 

~~~

 

The thing about being an Angel on Earth is, people can tell when their guard is down. Not in so many words, not “oh there’s a divine being come to represent Heaven’s will”, no. But humans that are tired, that are weary, they flock to Aziraphale like sheep to a shephard. 

 

He only wished he were better at giving them what they wanted.

 

“So then I told him, I said, if you can’t show me off to your friends, then what’s the point-”

 

Aziraphale was in his bookshop, trying so very hard not to have a fit over the very real possibility that this woman will let a makeup soaked tear splash onto his first edition copy of Anna Karenina. “My dear, can I make you a cup of tea?”

 

She sniffed. “All right.”

 

Feeling a bit guilty over the rush of victory that is entirely selfish, Aziraphale led her to the back of his shop, far away from any books that could get, well, wet. She really was crying quite a lot.

 

The thing about this advice giving is, Aziraphale knows he’s not great at it. Unconditional love, absolutely. Translating that into human relationship terms? Not so much. 

 

“Do you love him?” It seems like a decent place to start, but by the noise that comes out of the back of her throat, maybe not.

 

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again. “I would love him, if he loved me.”

 

The thing is, Aziraphale doesn’t think it works like that. He can’t imagine turning love off. For that matter, he can’t imagine turning love on. It’s just always there.

 

“Hmm,” he murmured noncommittally. 

 

The woman kept talking. “It isn’t safe to love without being loved back, is all. You can get awfully hurt that way.”

 

Aziraphale nodded. “Indeed.” Wasn’t it worth it, though? The full feeling of universal harmony, of feeling electric and alive. Maybe that sensation was only for angels, but if human love was anything like angelic, peace on Earth love, and Aziraphale had been led to believe it was, then surely it was a risk worth taking.

 

Something in her expression changed, her eyes softer and needier all at once. “Have you felt like this?”

 

Aziraphale hated to lie. Well, that wasn’t quite true. There were times when it was fun to bend the truth, to rile up Crowley or to chase away a customer that wasn’t worthy of owning a 19th century Austen. But lying about things that mattered? He couldn’t do that. Not with desperate smudged eyes asking.

 

“No.” Her face started to crumble, so he pressed on quickly. “No, not like this, although I have felt- sad.” His voice was halting, unsure. “Not sad in a small way either. It can- it can be a hard world to love, sometimes.” The Blitz, the plagues, the witch burnings flickered through his minds eye, too fast to be properly processed, but that’s the way it had to be. “Still.” He straightened his bow tie. “It wouldn’t be worth loving if it were finished.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

The air in the bookshop was stiller than usual. 

 

“The point of loving is to pour it in. Without a few cracks, what’s the point?”

 

As if his question were a pentagram complete with candles and a proper goat for slaughter, there was a flurry of activity. First, his bookshop bell rang, startling the poor dear into dropping her cup of tea. Almost immediately after, a familiar, loud, just drunk enough to be melodic voice broke the silence of the bookshop. “Aziraphale! You great bloody dork, weren’t we supposed to meet for lunch?”

 

He couldn’t blame Crowley. Well. Not too much. At least his distraction had allowed him to miracle the teacup empty of staining liquid before it hit the floor. 

 

Aziraphale shooed the woman out of the back entrance, before Crowley could spook her further. And, if he were being honest, before Crowley could notice that he was “playing pastor” again. The teasing was truly ferocious, and it had just died down again from the Jack incident.

 

“Yes, my dear, terribly sorry. I’ll be with you in a moment!” Aziraphale grabbed his favorite scarf (lime green and pink, if the reader must know) and bustled out the door, only to be met by a demon with an obnoxiously knowing grin.

 

“You had a customer back there.” Crowley winked. It wasn’t a very good wink though, what with the sunglasses. “I can tell. But you hate customers. Trying to save another soul, were you?”

 

Aziraphale sighed. “They come to me, Crowley, you know I can’t help it.”

 

“Oh, I know.” Crowley started steering him out the door. “But you know, as a demon, I really must frown on that sort of thing, whether you can help it or not. So I’m going to steal your dessert, for once.”

 

They both knew that was a lie. And Aziraphale did still hate lies. But somehow, it wasn’t so bad when Crowley did it.

 

~~~

 

After they thwarted the apocalypse, it took some time for things to truly get back to normal. Oh, most people didn’t remember the apocalypse, and the property damage was all reversed as well as it could be. But the energy was different, and for a few weeks, London was more subdued than usual.

 

So subdued, in fact, that when an elderly (to humans, anyway) man plopped himself down next to Aziraphale, he felt relieved. 

 

“You look like you know a lot about love,” the gentleman commented.

 

Aziraphale was never much for shrugging, but it was a useful gesture for conveying agreement but modesty, so he gave his best attempt.

 

“Then why, pray, are you being such an idiot.”

 

Aziraphale paused. Then he sputtered. Eventually he was able to spit out an “excuse me?” but it felt entirely too understated.

 

The man continued unencumbered. “You see, I spend a lot of time in this park. Used to be M-6, if you can believe it. I’m retired now, but the ducks remember me, so I make my rounds. You’ve been here for some time-”

 

_ Oh, fuck _ , a certain part of Aziraphale’s brain remarked.

 

“-not that it’s any of my business. But if you and that other surprisingly young looking lad don’t sort yourselves out before I die, I swear to you, I will haunt your sorry arses.”

 

Aziraphale was at a loss. “I’m sorry, I don’t-” he was about to say, ‘I don’t know what you mean’, but as previously mentioned, he really did hate lying, “-I don’t know what I could be doing differently.”

 

The man grinned, revealing a set of dentures that were far too loose to be functional. “Son, has anyone ever taught you the difference between love and romance?”

 

“I’m not built for romance.” And he truly felt that he wasn’t. Aziraphale was built for many things. He was built for hot chocolates and old books and sweaters that were starting to thin at the shoulders. He wasn’t built for romance, and he knew it.

 

“Love,” the man coughed, “love is the steady stuff. Romance is the swoop and the swing and the swish. You’ve got too much steady in you, that much is clear. But I can see it-” he winked “-a spark of the fire in you. Let him see that.”

 

Aziraphale thought of a warm June day in London. He thought about the heat of being drunk, the burn of wasabi, the blush that could consume him during a really well done reading of Shakespeare’s sonnet number twenty. 

 

He thought about the too cool temperature of heaven.

 

“Thank you,” he said, or at least tried to say. But the man was gone, off shuffling to feed the ducks. 

 

Like clockwork, because surely Crowley had a nose for precisely when Aziraphale was feeling the most off balance, the demon (his demon) appeared. “Giving sermons in the park again, angel?”

 

Aziraphale gave his best Gabriel impression and sniffed haughtily. “Actually, if you must know, I was a part of the flock today, dear.”

 

Crowley hummed one of his funny little bursts of syllables, and it was the most beautiful noise Aziraphale had heard in a while. Before he could think too much of it, he leaned forward (and unfortunately, had to lean up, just a tad) and suddenly his lips were cutting off the rest of Crowley’s funny little noise, and he felt a moment of regret at the loss before Crowley was kissing him back, surprise obvious by another little noise in the back of Crowley’s throat this time, and oh.

 

Aziraphale pulled away and smiled.

 

Crowley blinked. It wasn’t obvious behind the sunglasses to anyone but Aziraphale, but he knew. “What was that- that for?”

 

The angel grinned. “You’ll have plenty more occasions to figure it out, dear.”

 

But Crowley wasn’t moving, looked to be barely remembering to breathe. “Aziraphale, I’m not. I’m not going to be very good at this.” He swayed on his feet. “G-S-Someone, bless it, I’m going to need an advice book, or something, and you don’t sell those, you don’t sell anything newer than 1920, oh-”

 

Aziraphale couldn’t help but laugh. “Love, we’ll be fine.” He gestured at the sun. “Feel how warm it is?”

 

And to anyone else, it would be a non sequitur, but Crowley really did take a moment to turn his face to the sun. “Yessss” he hissed, so softly Aziraphale was the only one with a chance of hearing, and that was with advanced angel senses.

 

“So.” Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s hand. “So, we’ll be alright, won’t we.”

 

Crowley smiled, and to Aziraphale, it was a second sun.


End file.
